Organizations, such as those that produce, buy, sell, and/or lease products, may desire to forecast information concerning a product. For example, an organization that manufactures one or more products may desire to accurately forecast the demand for the product, the organization's production schedule for the product, and/or a supplier's delivery schedule for subcomponents of the product. Some organizations may use mathematical analyses to develop forecast information based on historical data. However, the mathematical analyses may fail to take into account process constraints that exist in the physical processes being analyzed and may thus produce forecasts that are not realistic.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,213,007 (the '007 patent) to Grichnik is directed to forecasting characteristics of a product using a genetic algorithm. In particular, the '007 patent discloses implementing a genetic algorithm to produce equations that model forecast information for a product. The genetic algorithm may determine data values for the equations so as to minimize a statistical error between historical data and data calculated by the equations. While the '007 patent may help to generate statistically accurate forecasts, the forecasts generated by the system of the '007 patent may, at times, generate forecasts that are not possible based on one or more real-world process constraints.
The disclosed methods and systems are directed to solving one or more of the problems set forth above and/or other problems of the prior art.